Monday, August 3, 2009

All is well and fine and all manner of things are spiff! The Moron thought to himself as he drove home from the auto parts store, the sweat born of his swashbuckling adventure therein still drying on his brow.

He winked at his sweaty reflection, exchanging with it the eyeball equivalent of the hi-five. He had deciphered the cryptic directions on the treasure map book; he had navigated the length and breadth of the oil filter aisle (taking in a rack of floor mats just in case); he had called Microsoft Office tech support for help, and he had wrested another ten minutes from the red-shirted men who tried to shoo him, empty-handed, out the door at closing time and won the prize! The elusive, magical and grippy-textured Golden Oil Filter!

It really was gold, too. Sort of. Most people would say that it was off-beige. The Moron decided that it was gold.

His vision blurred, and the final minutes of his encounter rewound, the image obscured by bars of white noise. It spun itself out again in halting slow motion, for the Moron's recall is not unlike the vaunted and distinguished format the cognoscenti call "VHS".

"You just makin' this purchase?" the red-shirted man behind the big counter asked.

The Moron eyed him suspiciously.

"Do you mean to tell me," he let one eyeball stray over to the man's name tag "William, that you can rent oil filters? I find that very suspicious indeed! That would be like renting bubble gum, sir!" The Moron reigned in his eyeballs, mustering them for a haughty sneer.

"No. No you can not. But if you don't need anything else, I need you to move over to the register at the end here so I can check you out."

The Moron posed. "You can check me out right here," he said. Rimshot!

"Ha ha."

"Okay. I shall abide your crazy rules," the Moron relented, drawing his wallet. He brandished a dollar. "And I shall fund my purchase with this and others like it."

The replay froze, the lower half of the screen rainbow-hued and vibrating. The Moron stopped playback altogether, and his mind's eye went blue.

"My finest moment!" he squealed.

He swerved off the rumble strip.

At home in his driveway, the Moron arranged all of his supplies in a neat little pile, as if they were nestled in their own little Excel cells. He ticked them all off his mental checklist: fresh oil, paper towels, a pair of pliers, a set of jeweler's screwdrivers, a pile of old newspaper, a little tin of mints, a Nerf football, an extra bowtie and of course the new oil filter. Check. He considered shading the filter's cell, because it was so important.

"Now to get the car up off the ground so that I may slither under it and wrench around down there!" he announced to a nearby pine cone. Fortunately, the Moron had planned ahead and purchased some ramps. (He had heard stories of people taking their cars to special buildings where men who lived in the floor changed your oil for you, but had discounted them.)

The ramps were made of stout plastic, about three feet long, sort of grayish in color and perplexing in nature. The trick, the Moron thought, was to align them in such a way as to cause the car to be on top of them. There were no instructions on them, and the paper they were wrapped in when he bought them was long gone.

He briefly considered fetching the sledge hammer and driving them under the car like the wedges they were, but realized that he did not possess a sledge hammer. The little ball-peen jobbie he found in the basement would take all day to get just one ramp under the car, and daylight was waning.

"I might save time by driving onto them," he suggested to the pine cone. The Moron thought he saw it out of the corner of his eye, nodding its approval. "That's all the go-ahead I need!"

What a great idea! This was going to be a large slice of real nice cake. Not that nasty cake with the artificial lemon goo between the layers. That stuff was crap.

The Moron set about his task with the vigor of a whole pile of toddlers. He made sure the car was on level ground and that there were no anthills under it. He threw the Nerf football onto the roof in a playful gesture he had planned from the outset. He scooted the tin of mints over to the left slightly. The ramps he pushed under the bumper, their pointy ends snugged against the car's tires.

Now the fun part! The Moron put the car in gear, gunned the engine, and the vehicle rose majestically into the air, like a jetliner if it were driving onto some ramps. He stopped at the peak of his climb, set the brake and hopped out.

Excellent. The Moron flashed a smile at the pine cone and giggled as his imaginary happy-hamster crawled up his sleeve. He walked around to the front of the car and was dismayed at how low the bumper was to the ground. It was only a couple inches off the driveway!

"These ramps must be defective!" he cried, booting the pine cone into a bush. He couldn't even see them! He stomped in an angry little circle.